Monday, 24 October 2016

we've been away for a while working on a bunch of things that hopefully you'll all get to see in the next few weeks. We've been working alongside Psychologist/Magician Richard Wiseman ( learn more about this excellent chap here.)

We're also putting a bunch of stuff together for the Creators for Creators grant that will allow us to take some time off work to dedicate ourselves to working on Escape. Fingers crossed this will come through and you'll be able to pick a copy up in a year or so.

I (Rik) have been writing some articles about comics and pop culture that are floating around the ether and JC has been working on some excellent posters for various factions. I'll get him to throw some stuff up on here as soon as possible.

The whole team is going on holiday to Dublin for a weekend so no doubt a slew of new project will spill out of that.

Monday, 9 May 2016

So you might have noticed that we have updated in sometime. Don't worry we are not dead. We've been working on a bunch of projects that we can't tell you about right now other than to say they're fun, informative and have been an incredible challenge. Because this is all commissioned work we're keeping it on the down-low as not to get in trouble, but if you like magic tricks, scepticism and puns (and lets face it if you like our work, you do) stay tuned.

In other news, JC is currently undertaking his masters in science communication and has been making all sorts of fun posters and mini comics about all sorts of science things. Space mostly I think. Furthermore all this futurism has inspired the Luddite to get on twitter and share his thoughts with the world. If that seems like your bag you can follow him here.

As for myself I've been working on a number of short stories that are driving me insane. I'm finding prose to be way harder than comics. Comics are an artform of necessity and (lack of ) space, what appears on the page, for the large part, has to be useful to the story or character. I guess the same is true with prose only without the space constraints one can't separate the necessary from the sufficient quite as easily. Any way for more of that, I'm slowly leaking these stories out here.

Also I'm applying for the DC Writer's Workshop, it's a long shot but you never know, this time next year the first part of my great Wonder Woman story could be hitting stores, or alternatively it could be hitting this blog if I don't get it.

Together we're working on our application for the Creators for Creators Grant, this is an amazing opportunity that would allow us to make comics full time for a year. At the moment we're stuck between with what we'd like to do for the grant though. Do we submit Escape, take a hit on it's expected page rate and finally get our brain child out into the world or do we come in with a fresh idea, something that is more appealing to publishers? Decisions, decisions.

Wednesday, 23 December 2015

So I (Rik) watched this series of Dr Who and was left a little wanting. I love Capaldi and think he's got some potential to bring some gravity to the character but I really didn't care for Clara. More and more I find that I am watching a children's show, not that there's anything wrong with that but it means my expectations of Who isn't meeting up with the reality. Having said that. {SPOILERS} when Clara got Raven'd, not only was I thinking "at last" but also we got see a little bit of the Doctor's dark side and that's something I always find richer that silly hats and talking to babies. Anyway The Doctor gets all pissy and goes a bit season 3 Malcolm Tucker. Immediately I wrote the following piece. Consider this an extra scene after the Raven episode and the last 2 episodes of the season being very different.

I did think as the season came to a close that they might have gone this way but they didn't for obvious reasons. Anyway enjoy.

Click to embiggen.

There you are.

There was a bunch of fun thing that happened whilst making this comic.
1) It's a miracle it got made with it being xmas, both of us being super busy with work and in JC's case becoming a master of science.

2) JC has never watched Who so had no idea what was happening, but after he read the script he said that he felt the gravity (semi pun intended) of the piece. That's rewarding to hear as a writer.

3) It's all upside and crazy. Those of you who follow our work, both of you, know that we like to play with panel layout. I had this idea that if you could traverse a small astral body you can physically take a character from looking up at something, in this case a planet, to looking down at something. Hey presto, a visual metaphor. Comics don't use these enough despite the visual nature of comics. Anywho that got us talking about the layout and we decided that it would be fun to make the comic rotate. I was worried how that would translate to digital viewing but the results speak for themselves. There's something sinister about an upside down character, facing away from the reader and threatening a planet. It's not a traditional panel but it's a fun little experiment.

We're getting together in the new year to discuss what we want to do going forward. We're both pretty busy, JC in particular as he is creating comics to teach people science, and these one page comics are fun and quick to do so you might be seeing a whole lot more of them.

Wednesday, 25 November 2015

We'd like to share something we did last year for the To Arms!comic anthology commemorating the 100th anniversary of the First World War. It's a great collection if you can get your hands on it (available from Limehouse Comics and from Gosh! comic shop in London).

Our particular comic centres on the true story of esteemed Welsh fantasy author Arthur Machen, and how one of his short stories, "The Angels of Mons" was adopted as a piece of
rallying wartime misinformation. You can read more about Machen here (Guardian article) and here (The Quietus feature). He's a pretty fascinating guy, largely lost to history.

We're not entirely sure why it's taken us until now to upload it, but here it is...